


She has fought and she has bled

by Garecc, Gunpowderdtim (Garecc)



Series: Ready, Aim, Fire [22]
Category: Once Upon a Time (In Space) - The Mechanisms (Album), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Card Games, Character Death, Clones, Death, Gen, Minor Character Death, Names, Original Rose Red Ocs, Sisters, Soldiers, War, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27975660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Garecc, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garecc/pseuds/Gunpowderdtim
Summary: The Queen of Hearts is the last Rose Red on the planet.This is how she ended up that way.
Relationships: The Queen Of Hearts & Other Rose Reds
Series: Ready, Aim, Fire [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799860
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	She has fought and she has bled

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot I was writing this for a solid month. but I remembered it and finished it.
> 
> Title from Rose Red

You and the rest of your battalion are stationed on a small planet, an odd planet.

Not that you know it's odd, you're hardly a month old, and for all you know, every planet has plants with leaves larger than your dwellings and animals that smile with impossibly wide lips.

You are a Red, and it's your job to take this planet.

You are a Red, and it's your job to Defeat The Enemy.

You're ordered to kill, so you do.

You're ordered to maim, so you do.

It's simple, really, you are a Red, and so you Fight.

There are others that share your face, share your scream, share your fear.

There are other Reds here.

And they are just as afraid as you are.

(You've seen what they do to the failures after all)

(You've seen their mangled bodies)

(You've seen them.)

Then your commanding officer is killed and things... Go wrong. Very quickly.

Chaos breaks among your ranks, and you know if you fail, when the replacement comes, and you _know_ one will, (there is always a replacement. There has been a replacement for all of the Reds who have been cut down around you, why would the commander be any different?) you will be punished, or killed.

Likely both from what you've seen and heard.

(You are replaceable after all.)

So you _can't_ fail.

But you have no orders.

You have no goal.

Your reason and your orders died with Commander Dodgson.

In the chaos there is no plan, no march, no coherent _goal._

Then there is a rebel attack.

You watch dozens of your likeness fall dead.

You watch your reflection die in screaming agony.

You know a pointless battle when you see one, you know a dead end when you face one so you _run away_.

You _flee_.

You know yourself a coward as you hide, but as the head of one of your sisters rolls behind you, you know yourself to be in the right.

You would not have survived had you stayed in line.

There is no War if the soldiers all die.

It's just you and four others, when you come back next light.

Bloodstained and broken, you know yourselves to be alone.

But _someone_ will surely come to replace The Commander.

And if the fight ends, what use are you?

You are a Red, made to fight, made to kill.

You are _nothing_ beyond that.

And without a Commander, you are useless, and will surely be killed when your superiors return for you.

So you have to be useful while you wait for them to come back.

_You have to be._

There are five of you alone here.

It's an odd friendship. Between the five of you. A desperate shaking thing as you try to figure what's next.

What to do with only five of you, with no Commander.

You know the answer is **War** , but none of you quite know _how_.

(But you all _do know_ that if you give up, there will be far more pain in store when your treachery is discovered.)

There is a pack of cards with the Commander's things. You find it while looking for anything that could be orders. Anything that could be a directive.

You flip through it, and bring it out.

(Memories of a time that you don't recall and isn't yours lend you the rules.)

One quietly, upon seeing it, mentions that she knows how to play with that same look of the half known memories you share.

And you do.

You win the game, then again, hearts dripping from your fingers.

You declare yourself the Queen Of Hearts, smiling for the first time in your existence as you all pick suits.

The youngest, the one from a different batch of clones shrugs. She doesn't have the same half-memories you do, so she takes the joker card. Says she’ll watch and figure it out herself.

You pick what would eventually be your names sitting around that table.

You are Hearts, and you have discovered love.

And you are deciding you like it.

But the War must go on, and you all pick up your guns.

The war must be fought. 

And you are _glorious_. You take land and lives with no hesitation, no wait, you and your sisters are as unstoppable as an army.

(You have no idea when or why you started calling them your sisters.)

Spades is the first to die, almost a decade later. 

A shaking rebel burying a sharpened shovel in her back, breaking her spine, after she falls, the rebel swings down, and the blade shatters her skull.

You and your sisters watch her fall, too far, dead on the ground.

She is dead, she is blood and gore.

She's a fallen soldier, and there is _nothing_ you can do.

None of the four of you know what to do with the body, so you freeze the body with the others.

Command when they return will want proof she did not run.

Will want to know she died fighting for them.

When Command returns (They _will_ return.) they might honor her.

  
  


Joker dies in an accident. 

She swerves her vehicle to avoid crashing into one of the worms that are taller than houses and burrow as deep as mines, and the rover flips. Tumbling down a hill.

You only find her days later.

She died alone, trapped in the mangled metal.

You hope she died quick, but know she likely didn’t.

You are Reds after all. 

You were made to survive anything.

Clubs is the next to go, she dies slowly, and neither you nor Diamonds know why.

She shrivels in on herself, first unable to walk, then speak, she dies curled in your arms. Too weak to do much more than sleep in the end.

Something she ate. Diamonds mumbles. That's the only explanation you have.

Neither of you want to acknowledge your growing fear that your bodies simply were not made to last this long.

You are both Reds after all, you were made to die.

Diamonds dies next, in the heat of battle next to you.

Your hands clasped, the War raging.

You are winning.

Then a sword lops off her head and she lands dead against you.

Something shatters as you grab the now victorious giant-slayer by the shoulder. 

You grab his sword and wrench it from his grasp, your hand is bloody as you turn his sword around, and strike.

You behead him in one strike, and you are alone.

Your sisters have fallen, and there is no king for command, and as you kill the rest, you know there is no backup coming.

You bring her back to your garden, and you sob.

Command isn't coming.

No one will come and change this.

No one will save her.

You are the last Red on this planet.

You no longer have a Command to fight for.

No longer have a king backing you.

So you draw yourself together and decide you may as well be a Queen.

As you realize this, you begin to laugh, clutching your head as you turn hysterical as you recall that joke you made the night after The Commander died, when you picked your names.

You are the Queen Of Hearts.

You will be your own command.

You are going to destroy those who dare oppose you. 

Who _dared_ to kill your sisters.

Who _dared_ to force you to be alone.

Your war will rage until they are all dead.

Until you cut off all their heads.

As you laugh over her body, as you sob, you do not care for Cole.

You do not care for your creator.

You and your sisters found love with each other, and now they are dead.

This is not Coles war you are fighting.

This is your own.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @gunpowderdtim


End file.
